1st CALL FOR PAPERS
FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON THE SEMANTIC WEB IN HEALTH CARE AND
THE LIFE SCIENCES
held in conjunction with
THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL SEMANTIC WEB CONFERENCE (ISWC) 2006, ATHENS, GA
under the auspices of the W3C HCLSIG.
Life Science Research and Health Care are areas undergoing phenomenal
growth, holding much promise for our future as long as we can manage
and apply the new knowledge gained without driving up costs. Key to
their success is the implementation of new informatics models that
will unite many forms of biological and medical information across
all institutions, through the encoding of meaning into the data and
their interpretations. By focusing on the semantics of information,
researchers will have more access to the knowledge required to
effectively find cures to diseases, while doctors will have better
tools for individualized clinical management of patients.
The W3C Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group
(HCLSIG) http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/ was chartered in December
of 2005 to develop and support the use of Semantic Web technologies
and practices to improve collaboration, research, development and the
adoption of innovation in Health Care and the Life Sciences. In
January of 2006, HCLSIG hosted its first face-to-face meeting http://
www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/f2f-2006/f2f-summary.html to define a set of
activities focused on reducing the barriers to adoption. As a part of
this process, we are organizing the first international workshop on
the Semantic Web in Health Care and the Life Sciences in conjunction
with ISWC 2006.
Aims:
Our aims for this workshop are threefold. First, we expect the
workshop to provide a current snapshot of the application of Semantic
Web technologiesÂ’ development trajectory. Secondly, to provide an
opportunity to showcase health care and the life sciences as an
aspect of the Semantic Web to a wider audience within the Semantic
Web community and to interested external parties. Thirdly, to provide
a forum for discussion that will facilitate forward planning of both
the W3C HCLSIG and more generally the research and development agenda
of the wider community.
Audience:
The workshop encourages participation from both academia and industry
with an emphasis on the theoretical and practical aspects of applying
Semantic Web technologies to the challenges of Health Care and the
Life Sciences. We look forward to industry to present its
requirements and use cases, and academic and industrial researchers
to present their ideas and solutions. We encourage participation from:
Â• Health Care, Clinical, and Life Science Consortia
Â• Research Institutes and Centers
Â• Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Companies
Â• IT Solution Vendors
Â• Government Agencies
We invite presentation proposals that focus on the application of the
Semantic Web to the life sciences and/or health care. The emphasis of
the presentation should be on real world implementations that
highlight the value added by utilizing a Semantic Web based
implementation.
Topics of Interest:
Â• Core vocabularies and ontologies to support cross-community data
integration and collaborative efforts
Â• Tools for transforming clinical and life science data into RDF
and OWL formats
Â• Guidelines and Best Practices for Resource Identification to
support integrity and version control
Â• Better integration of Scientific Publication with people, data,
software, publications, and clinical trials
Â• Knowledge ecosystems and knowledge lifecycle
Â• Ontologies in life sciences: knowledge representation, ontology
creation, maintenance and evaluation in health care and the life
sciences.
Â• Applications of SW in clinical protocols and pathways
Â• Applications of SW in drug safety and efficacy
Â• Industrial applications of SW technologies in drug discovery and
personalized health care
Submissions:
Contributions are sought for position papers for presentation.
Position papers should be submitted of no more than 1000 words
(maximum) to iswc2006-hcls-cfp@predmed.com by the submission date.
Please note, by submitting an abstract, you are granting permission
for your abstract and presentation to be posted on this Wiki: http://
esw.w3.org/topic/HCLS/ISWC/Workshop
Important Dates:
Abstract Submission: 15 September, 2006
Notification of acceptance: 1 October, 2006
Workshop Dates: 5 or 6 November, 2006 (TBD, check website)
Organizing Committee:
Â• Tonya Hongsermeier, Partners Health Care System
Â• Joanne Luciano, Harvard Medical School, Predictive Medicine, Inc.
Â• Eric Neumann, Teranode Corporation
Â• Susie Stephens, Oracle
For more information on the workshop, the webpage is available at:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HCLS/ISWC/Workshop